Giveaway - Marty's Nut-Free Party

This giveaway has been drawn. Congratulations to Sue!

I used to love going to parties - yummy food everywhere. Now parties stress me out. My son is anaphylactic to peanuts and quite possibly some of the treenuts he is allergic to. My daughter is allergic to dairy and egg - they are in almost every party food, especially the cake. Going to a party means a lot of work before (I can't just rock up, I have to ensure I bring enough party food to make sure my kids don't feel like they are missing out) and during (I have to watch them - and other kids who like to 'share' - aka put food in other kids' mouths) - exhausting!

My son is 5 now and as he gets older, he will start to take on more responsibility for what he eats. We talk about it a lot but until now we haven't read any books together about it.

A couple of months ago a friend told me about the release of Marty's Nut-Free Party by Katrina Roe. I was quite excited about it because she's Australian and it looked like it would be a great story for my son. I contacted Katrina and asked if she would send one to me to give away and she kindly did. We've had a little sneak peek (who can resist that front cover?!) and found it to be an engaging and fun read for both my 3 and 5 year olds. Seeing Marty end up in hospital because he ate nuts, even just something that had the nuts taken off made for great conversation. I could see my kids realising that it isn't just them who has these food limitations put on them. My husband and I enjoyed the illustrations that reminded us of our childhood birthday cakes from the Women's Weekly Cookbook!

My children are very sad that we are giving this copy away but I plan on purchasing it so that we have it in our bookshelf. I also plan to send it to school for them to read aloud to the class so that we can start helping his friends think about looking after him at their parties too.

Would you like to win this copy of Marty's Nut-Free Party by Katrina Roe? Just leave a comment sharing what party food you might provide for a child with allergies to dairy, egg and nuts at your next party. One entry per person please, Australian residents only, one winner will be drawn at random Tuesday 9/10/12 6pm WA time.

Thanks to Katrina Roe and Wombat Books Publishing for the chance to giveaway this great children's book!

Find Katrina on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/katrinamacdonaldroe

Or her blog:

www.frommouthsofbabes.com

You can order Marty's Nut-Free Party online at Wombat Books's website:

http://www.wombatbooks.net/martysnutfreeparty.html

 

Menu Plan Monday and cookbook review

A great resource!

Another week, another menu! How great was Kate's win on Masterchef last night?! We were very excited for her.

Monday - homemade pizzas - they are great when you have others over for dinner - easy to multiply!
Tuesday - Fish in Foil with vegies
Wednesday - Roast Chicken and vegies (leftover chicken used on sandwiches for next 2 days)
Thursday - Spaghetti bolognaise (using pork & veal mince)
Friday - Pea & Ham Soup
Saturday - Went out to an Italian restaurant with the kids - Miss 2 had a pizza with no cheese - amazing to think that we can do this every now and then - having wheat in the diet certainly makes it easier!
Sunday - Turkey burgers - fantastic - we all really enjoyed them - I'll blog about it soon.

I bought this cookbook a while ago and found it fantastic to browse and inspire me with different ideas. I especially like the section with cookies/ cakes etc because that is the area I tend to struggle with. Each recipe has a code at the top to tell you what it is free of and a lot of the recipes are free of most allergens. The author is a Mum of children with allergies and she found she was supplying recipes to lots of her friends and so the cookbook was a natural progression. She has sections at the back with information on all the allergies she provides for in the book as well as a shopping guide with allergen information for lots of regular grocery items like flours, stocks, margarines, processed meats, sauces and snack foods. Really helpful and worth buying especially with the price. She also has a website that you can check out for more allergy information.

Vanilla bean biscuits

I adapted this recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly Allergy-free Cooking for Kids book.

125g Nuttelex
1/2 cup Gluten Free Icing Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (or 1 vanilla bean)
1 1/4 cups plaing GF flour

Place Nuttelex in a bowl and sift icing sugar into it. Put vanilla bean paste (or seeds) into the bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in siften flour in two batches (just not all at once really).

Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth. Shape the dough into a log (diameter as big as you want the biscuits to be). Wrap in clingwrap and put in the fridge for at least 30mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line baking tray with baking paper.

Cut log into ~1cm slices. Place slices on trays about 2cm apart. Bake for about 12mins or until they get a little golden. Cool on the trays.

And as for the recipe book itself. Now that I own it and have looked through it, it's only ok. Unfortunately they separate the allergy free recipes - so it would help if your child was only allergic to one of the egg, dairy or gluten. But for my girl needing to miss all three, I still have to do almost as much substitution as a normal cook book. Lots of great kid food ideas though.

Vanilla Cookies

We made vanilla cookies from Friendly Food Cookbook last week. The kids enjoyed using the animal cookie cutters but ended up eating the 'round' cookies first!

I think the book is a very good purchase if you children have food chemical intolerances but we have had some good recipes for food allergies as well. It's just a bit more restricted than what my kids need to be.

I've made their marshmallow bithday cake recipe for my daughter's 2nd birthday today. Will post a pic and review next week. Can't quite believe 2 years have gone past already! Hopefully it also means we are closer to her allergies disappearing - can't wait!

Women's Weekly Allergy Free Cooking for Kids

I don't normally post about things I haven't tried but I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'm going to buy this cookbook. Given that it is Women's Weekly, I am pretty sure there'll be some tried and tested and good recipes in here. My reservation about buying it is that it seems not to have many recipes that have multiple allergens removed, but since I've only read descriptions online, I can't confirm that.
So after that disclaimer, here it is: Allergy Free Cooking for Kids. It looks fun, well-organised and full of nutritional information. It has recipes that are dairy, egg or gluten free.
Let me know if you have seen it and share your thoughts.

Click here for a website that has a really great price for it, although you should always shop around before buying it. I can't confirm that this is the cheapest price. Wow - so many disclaimers in this post!

Update July 11 - I now own the cookbook and I was right - the book is divided into 3: egg-free then dairy-free and gluten-free, no combinations at all. With some adaptation you can still use a good amount of recipes but it is certainly not as good as I had hoped for someone with multiple allergens.

Book review: Friendly Food

Friendly Food is a recipe book created by the RPA Hospital allergy unit and has great recipes in it helping you to avoid allergens, chemicals and/or additives. Although a lot of the recipes aren't useful to our family (eg they have nuts or something else in them that can't be replaced), a lot of them are great and enough to make it worth buying. We are currently borrowing one from a friend but have bought one online and hopefully it will arrive soon.

So far I have made fish patties, crunchy chicken bites and vanilla cookies from it and all have been really tasty.

Book Review: Managing Your Child's Food Allergies

I heard about this book on the radio and went out and bought it that same day.

The Complete Australia Guide For Parents: Managing Your Child's Food Allergies

It goes through the following things, plus more:

- What is a food allergy
- Understanding anaphylaxis
- Food-allergy testing
- Getting the message across to family, caregivers and schools
- Understanding food labelling
- Keeping your food-allergic child well fed
- Living positively with food allergies

It is a great way for parents new to their child's diagnosis to familiarise themselves with everything about allergies, plus a few chapters of it would be helpful for extended family or friends to read, if they are having a hard time coming to grips with the news. It also considers possible reasons for the unbelievable increase in food allergy in the western world. There are many options but I want to point out (because lots of people think this and say it to the mother) that maternal diet while pregnant/breastfeeding has nothing to do with causing food allergy. That has been scientifically proven.

I am going to go back and read a few chapters again, especially about keeping my child well-fed. I encourage to you get your hands on a copy. I am pretty sure I've even seen it at Big W (which would, no doubt, be the cheapest place to buy it) and you can get it from numerous online stores like Borders (free postage) and Angus & Robertson.